ilias

Hah yep this one's been on all our lists since our first Bugs/Sir Donald trip Jealous of your plans this weekend! Crush it!

Colchuck is certainly a good outing for what you are looking for. However, keep in mind the camping situation there... to camp at Colchuck Lake or anywhere else that would facilitate this trip requires permits. These permits are available through a lottery usually run early in the year (February?), and the probability of winning the lottery seems to be quite low ( < 10% seemingly based on my experience and that of everyone else I know - but maybe better for weekday). Even if you do get a permit, there is also the party size limit to consider (it is 8 for the enchantments, which is lower than most other areas where party size limits are usually 12).

Yep that seems to be the consensus. The route is mostly 5.8 and used to be rated 5.8+ but the roof move is definitely 10a and I guess standard practice is to rate things by the individual hardest move. The move protects really well though and also you can pull through it on gear so you don't need to be a 5.10a leader to climb this route. I found the first pitch to be more difficult than the roof pitch, as it is very sustained 5.8/5.8+ climbing.

Definitely get on some snow as well and practice traveling efficiently and confidently on snow. Practice using an ice axe in all the ways its meant to be used. Most of the below may be a bit difficult yet but all should be doable before you are ready to hop on Rainier. In addition to the suggestions above, to get some more snow / glacier travel experience, consider the below. Most of these require competence in glacier travel techniques (i.e. on a rope team) so if going on a glacier make sure you know what you're doing! A 2-3 day glacier course with any guiding company would possibly be sufficient if you go and practice the skills they teach you independently after the course. - Sahale (Glacier) - Eldorado (East Ridge) - Hood (Old Chute) - Shuksan (Sulphide Glacier) - Baker (Coleman Deming route) Also, other hikes/scrambles to consider as you progress: - Three Fingers (off mountain loop highway) - Cashmere Mountain - Silver Star - Maude, Seven Fingered Jack, and Fernow - Fortress and Chiwawa - Tower and Golden Horn (skip the last few feet of Golden Horn for now, the summit block is class 5) - Stuart (Cascadian Couloir)

Trip: Valhallas - Gimli, Asgard, Niselheim - Date: 8/11/2016 Trip Report: Lisa and I spent 4 days in the Valhallas. A beautiful area and one I will have to come back to do more climbing in the future. Gimli is the classic everyone hears about, but there are like a hundred routes in here, ranging from moderate ridge climbs to hard 5.11 and aid big wall climbs. For the climbs we did, we mostly went by Steph Abegg's beta as well as a trip report from Supertopo, all linked here: http://www.stephabegg.com/home/tripreports/britishcolumbia/valhallas2 http://www.stephabegg.com/home/tripreports/britishcolumbia/gimli http://www.supertopo.com/tr/South-Ridge-of-Gimli-Peak-A-Lesser-Known-Canadian-Classic/t12165n.html On the first day (Aug 10), we hiked in to Gimli camp and hunkered down as the clouds and wind swirled around us and periodic showers came down. On the second day (Aug 11), we woke up to clearer skies and got up to climb Gimli (S Ridge, 5.10a, 7p). Clouds rolled in in the afternoon, and we climbed into the mists high on the S ridge until it cleared up again. We then returned to camp and packed everything up, and hiked over the Gimli-Niselheim col down into the Mulvey Lakes basin, where we set camp. This basin is absolutely beautiful, rivalling the Enchantments basin. The descent from Gimli is an extremely well cairned class 3 down scramble, luxury! Day three (Aug 12), we climbed the SW ridge of Asgard (5.7, 5p). Asgard has multiple climbs on solid rock on its south face, but the south ridge offered more of a rest day after doing Gimli the day before. The views from Asgard offer the best position to see the Valhallas range. We got back to camp early and enjoyed the lake. Beta on this route is limited so here's a bit: - Start by scrambling up slabs to the col below the SW ridge of Asgard. These are unprotectable near the beginning but fairly secure class 3-4 climbing. - Climb up the crest for a short bit (~10-20m) and then turn left of the crest into a deep dihedral / shallow gully that parallels the crest just on the left. Climb up this feature for ~ 2 pitches, then exit right onto the crest when it becomes easy to do so. - Climb 1 more easy pitch up the crest and then scramble to the summit. I'm not actually sure where the 5.7 climbing was on this route, it mostly felt 4th - low 5th. There might have been an occasional move that could be called 5.7 but there was definitely never any sustained 5.7 climbing. Day four (Aug 13), we packed up camp and headed back up to the Gimli-Niselheim col, from which we quickly climbed Niselheim NE Ridge (5.7, 4p). The first two pitches had some wickedly exposed 5.7 moves with adequate but not abundant protection. Heady! Descending the other ridge of Niselheim involved some careful class 4 downclimbing, and at one point we set a rappel for a section we didn't want to down climb. From there, we headed back to the car, a mere 1 hour down the trail from Gimli camp. See my entire set of photos here: https://goo.gl/photos/eRzNgW79v4QJUV617 Gimli highlights Route: About to head off to climb: Me belaying Lisa up P1, another party waiting to follow: Lisa leading up into the clouds on P5: Looking back down from P5: Following Lisa up the crest: Me after having just pulled the roof: Looking back down from above the roof as Lisa belays me on P6: Summit pano: Heading down into the basin, Gimli behind: Rainbows beside Gimli over basin: Asgard highlights View of Asgard as we descend into the basin: Start Asgard by scrambling up the slabs: Looking back at the basin from the start of the slabs: Looking down P1: Scruffy corner climbing up P3: Nice views from the top as we start the descent: View of Gladsheim and Dag: Back to camp early, time to practice our alpine urgency: Niselheim highlights Taking star photos that night, before we headed up Niselheim (right) in the morning: Stars over Asgard, even got one of the meteors from the Perseids: Exposed 5.7 climbing near start of Niselheim: Niselheim summit views: Gear Notes: Rock gear, all used extensively: Cams - Singles: 0.1-0.4, #3, Doubles: 0.5-2 Nuts - one set Slings - 13 We also brought ice axes and crampons. Never used the crampons, but we did take out the ice axes for the snow just below the Gimli-Niselheim col. It's low angle and we could definitely have done without them, but since we had them they were nice to have in hand. Approach shoes are sufficient. Approach Notes: Approaches are always so nice and easy in other places compared to the Cascades. 1.5 hours up beautiful trail to Gimli camp. A quick tromp across a well cairned boulder field up to the Gimli-Niselheim col. A steel cable is bolted to the mountain side for the couple barely exposed moves coming down from the col to get to the snow towards the Mulvey lakes basin. The basin is wide open, no bushwhacking to get around to anywhere.

See here regarding the issue with posting your trip report: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1149152/Trip_Report_Issue#Post1149152

I've used it on everything from 7.5mm twins to a 9.8mm single and most sizes in between, and didn't find that it was great at any of those diameters. Here were my impressions: - As Nick mentions, the autolocking rappel mode is way too jerky for me, even when hooking a biner through the nose of the device to control the rappel as they recommend. - For belaying from the top, it's alright but takes slightly more effort than an ATC to pull the ropes through. It's usable but I often find my arms tiring out belaying followers up if I'm leading pitch after pitch. - For lead belaying, it takes a higher level of micromanagement to make sure that you don't accidentally short rope your leader. If they make a sudden move up or jerk up on the rope to clip, the device may auto lock and then be a slight pain to resume normal belaying with. - For top rope belaying it's great, but then so are a ton of other devices. I gave it a good long chance of using it as my primary belay device for almost a full season thinking that as I got used to it it would get smoother but unfortunately, it never got smooth enough for me to really like it. Nick - yeah we've talked about the Alpine Up, I keep meaning to try it out but haven't yet.

Lot's of cool belay devices coming out these days but haven't seen anything new that can belay 2 strands of rope in a while. I'd really love a belay device that provides braking-assistance for lead belaying, rappels smoothly but automatically stops your rappel if you take your hands off, can be used in guide mode to belay from the top, can be used with both single or twin ropes, feeds ropes as smoothly as an ATC in all of these use cases, and isn't absurdly bulky/heavy. The megajul/microjul devices from Edelrid tried to do this but fail on the "feed ropes smoothly" front.

Nice work! Glad you found my TR useful

Thanks! Definitely a cool area and looks like it has a lot more untapped potential. I'll definitely have to go in there and explore some more

Trip: Twin Sisters Range - Little Sister - North Face - 5.4 3p (FA) Date: 7/24/2016 Trip Report: Last weekend, Lisa and I went into the Twin Sisters range to check out the area. It was our first time there and we were inspired by recent beautiful photos from the area and the mention of many moderate routes in the new guidebook. On Saturday, the weather was much worse than predicted and we arrived at camp near Green Creek soaked from bushwhacking through underbrush. After looking up at the hills around us covered in clouds, we decided to set up camp. As the afternoon wore on, the weather improved a bit and we climbed Green Creek Arete. This route has some fun pitches towards the top, but is a lot of work to descend back down. It would make much more sense to climb this route and then continue on the north side of the ridge to climb the South Twin as part of a traverse of the range or something, rather than descending back down to Green Creek. Starting the descent: For Sunday, we wanted to head up the glacier and go climb something up there. To get up the glacier, you don't just go straight up the drainage to the base of the glacier, as there are cliff bands there that would make ascending difficult. Instead, we scrambled up slabs to the left and then traversed onto the glacier fairly high up: The views of Baker in this area are gorgeous: Up on the glacier, we ran into Darin and his partner, who were off exploring some unnamed peak in the area. At this point, we were still deciding which line we were gonna climb. Darin pointed out some lines on the N/NE side of the Little Sister that as far as we knew, had not been climbed and looked to have some good rock. So Lisa and I figured we'd check it out. We ended up climbing approximately this line, which as far as I can tell is likely a first ascent: It consisted of three pitches of climbing up to 5.4 in difficulty. The rock was remarkably solid with remarkably little loose rock strewn on the route for something that hadn't been climbed. There are many possible variations on this route on both the right and left. P1 (5.4, 40m): Start on the slabs just left of the top of the snow finger on the N face. These slabs are criss-crossed with cracks everywhere and can take all kinds of pro. One could follow the slabs further left to the Arete, but I wanted a bit of more vertical climbing. I found this by going straight up to where the slab hits a bit of a headwall. The headwall was very blocky, and while vertical, was probably only about 5.4. After the few moves up that, there was a few more slabby moves until I reached a belay just below another steep section. Looking back from near start of P1: Coming up on the headwall, with some easy blocky moves just left of center: P2 (5.4, 40m): This pitch started up another steep bit (5.4) through a bit of offwidth/chimney-type terrain, then you go up a big easy corner and then eases off into some lower angle slabs and scrambling up and right to reach a nice belay ledge. Looking down from P2: Higher on P2: Belay ledge with a view: P3 (5.0, 70m): From the belay ledge, scramble/climb straight up slabs to the summit, probably mostly 3rd/4th class but the exposure made it feel like some 5.0 climbing. From the belay ledge, our 60m rope did not reach the rap anchors near the summit and we simuled for ~10m. Looking up at P3 towards the summit: Lisa following up P3: Descent: We rappelled from the slung anchors at the summit back down the N Face. After that 1 30m rappel, we scrambled down a bit of a corner system to the ledge where P2 started. From there, we scrambled down skier's left and traversed across a deep gully onto the NW ridge. We did another 30m rappel here from a horn we slung and that brought us down close to the snow. Nice views at the top: Gear Notes: We had a single rack 0.3-2 and it was plenty. The glacier is mostly low angle and could be done without crampons/axes if the snow is not too firm, though we had both and found them helpful. The last bit of snow up the snow finger to the base of our route on the Little Sister was steep enough that I definitely wanted an axe, but this could potentially be bypassed by getting onto the rock lower. Approach Notes: Here's our approach track: The crossing near the cars is on some narrow logs lashed together with thin cords by climbers: The climber's trail after the Elbow Lake turnoff is copiously marked with blue ribbons and reflective blue diamond markers on trees. It's probably the best marked climber's path I've ever seen anywhere, someone put a lot of work into it. However, the last section just before you get to the Green Creek crossing is still quite overgrown and a bit scwhacky. This might improve over time as the area seems to be getting more popular (we saw 2 other parties in there).

Doesn't sound like anyone's been up there since when I posted. With the relatively cool/cloudy weather we've had, I would not expect it to have deteriorated too badly since then.

Nice work, way to catch the short weather window to tag the peak. Also, just another illustration of the risks of splitting up, especially in bad weather or when it's dark. I've been on a number of trips where the decision was made to split up and then meet back up, for whatever reason, and it's never turned out well.

Wow, sounds like quite the adventure. Dunno if I would have wanted to be going through that glacier with zero visibility like that! I like this quote... "The fear of quickly oncoming nightfall should never be an excuse to bail!" Sounds like a sound philosophy! Can't wait to see the pictures.

See the issue with posting copy/pasted trip reports and a workaround, here: http://cascadeclimbers.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/topics/1149152/Trip_Report_Issue#Post1149152

I use backcountry navigator pro. On my Galaxy s7. Like it a lot, it's packed full of every feature you could think of.

Nice work. Looks fun! East Ridge of Forbidden is still on my list, too. Did you get a look at the east ledges descent? Is it in good shape or wet/snowy?

Of course! Hope it helps someone. Also, I made a detailed beta sheet based on a collation of Summitpost info, Steph Abegg's report, and some other trip reports. If anyone is headed up there and wants it let me know.

No trees at all on the PCT between the trailhead at hwy 20 and the north fork trail junction. Someone had just come through with a chainsaw within the last day or two. The park creek trail, on the other hand, was completely covered in trees.

When I was there (2015 and 2014), none of the routes we climbed required more than a single 60m rope to rappel. You should research the beta on the specific routes you are planning to climb and determine whether any of them need more than that. You can get off Bugaboo Spire and Snowpatch Spire with just a single 60m.

Trip: Goode Mountain - Northeast Buttress Date: 7/3/2016 Trip Report: With the 3 day weekend, Allie and I chose Goode as our objective. What a climb! This is full value Cascades climbing at its best: absurdly long approach, bushwhacking, stream crossings, slide alder, class 4 approach slabs, glacier crossing, moat crossing, and of course a giant beautiful ridge climb. We encountered everything from bluebird weather to rain, snow, and whiteout, and everything from dry rock to icy couloirs. Definitely a varied experience! Each of the three days felt completely different. The actual climb of the Northeast Buttress was by far the fastest and easiest part of the whole trip. It's also very fun and beautiful, as good as any similar ridge route I've climbed anywhere. Here's our approximate track, 36 miles and 9700' of elevation gain: http://www.hillmap.com/m/ag1zfmhpbGxtYXAtaGRychULEghTYXZlZE1hcBiAgICw_Z3lCAw We were also gonna try to summit Storm King on Monday, but it sent all its storms against us and we had to settle for just Goode. As it turned out, we were wiped out enough by the time we got back to the car that it was probably a good thing we hadn't also climbed Storm King. On the way in, I was worried about the stream crossings as we are in the midst of the melt cycle, but they turned out very manageable. At Grizzly Creek, we went upstream to a constriction and I threw this log across the stream which we used as a bridge: North Fork Bridge Creek was also easily crossed on a log, a little bit downstream of where you bushwhack down to it: The bushwhacking after crossing the North Fork was pretty intense: We emerged out of the bushes onto talus leading up the south side of the valley towards Goode: Goode standing proud above, with Storm King on the right: We chose the direct approach just right of the first waterfall (center of the photo below the NEB), as shown in our track and described in other trip reports. As we ascended, we were surrounded by waterfalls plunging into snowy gullies with giant motes, which looks pretty cool: Here, we encountered slabs that were slightly thought provoking with 3 day packs and mountaineering boots: Above the slabs, we found the "magical alder tunnel" mentioned in other trip reports. It was magical in some areas: And not so magical in others: After getting out of the alder, we found a snow finger that led us all the way up to the 5400' bivy: We found out that 5400' bivy really only had spaces big enough for a bivies, but we set up my firstlight there anyway: In the morning, we were at first greeted by heavy clouds and light rain: However, we decided to wait and see what the weather would do, and by 8am it cleared up and we decided to go for it. The Goode glacier was minimally crevassed and crossing it was easy, with fun views of seracs around us: We tried several spots to get onto the Northeast Buttress, but they didn't connect until the very top one before the constriction leading up the couloir between Goode and Memaloose Ridge. Here, we downclimbed into the moat and then traversed along the rocks to the base of the route: The first pitch was loose and dirty class 5 until we reached the crest, but after that it quickly eased up into mellow class 3/4 terrain with grassy ledges: All of the 3/4 climbing is on the climber's left side of the crest or occasionally on the crest itself, but never on the right side. We made quick progress up the buttress, doing the class 3/4 section in 2 simul pitches. As the crest narrowed, the climbing reached a fairly obvious transition where it got harder. We pitched out 3 pitches, each of which involved bypassing difficulties on the crest by going left and then traversing back. After that, the climbing eased up again just as the "black ampitheatre" came into view. It is very obvious on the right side of the crest: Which the crest is not that steep, the exposure on it is wild and enjoyable: We got to the bivy ledge and chose the right arete, which other trip reports had said was the easy one: This proved to be true, and we did the section from the bivy ledge to the summit in a single simul pitch, at the end of which I had one nut left on my harness and no other gear. On level with Black Tooth Notch: Nearing the summit: Summit at last! We downclimbed 30' from the summit and then did 3 rappels, all strongly trending rappeler's left to get to a final slung horn anchor, from which we traversed on a ledge out to Black Tooth Notch. There's a rap station right at the notch, which we used rather than scrambling down to the next rap station: The SW couloir was filled with snow, and the last (3rd) rappel landed us nicely onto it: The snow was very gloppy in some areas, but ice hard in others, and we ended up face-in downclimbing the whole couloir: At the bottom of the couloir, there's a cairn on the left and you scramble down some easy choss: From there, broad easy snow slopes led us down to a flat bivy site at 7700', where there was conveniently also running water: In the morning, when we were supposed to go do Storm King, we were greeted with this view out the door of our tent: We slept in for a few hours, but the white out and the snow continued, and at 9am we began our descent: In the whiteout, we didn't find whatever "climber's trail" is supposed to exist in the area, but we scrambled down a bunch of class 3/4 slabs and boulders heading in the general direction of the rib west of the broad ravine. We eventually ended up in beautiful meadows (having forgotten to take our helmets off): The meadows quickly gave way to burnt out forest which continued all the way down to the park creek trail. The "climber's trail" down this area is pretty much completely gone as far as I could tell, just walk down through the ash of the burnt forest. There are faint remnants of the climber's path for the final 500' of descent: After hitting the Park Creek trail, we hiked out ~16 miles, by the end of which I was about ready to fall over. Definitely a full value experience! Gear Notes: Pro: - set of nuts - single set of cams 0.3-2 - 10 double slings, 3 single slings Mountaineering boots, no climbing shoes needed. Crampons and ice axe were needed. Approach Notes: Long!

Was thinking of getting on it this weekend (July 4th)... think the creek crossings will be impassable?

You mean like this? https://caltopo.com/view#ll=47.4937,-120.8362&e=30&t=usi&z=4&c=4.26,142.56 On CalTopo, if you right click on any location on the map, then go to Point Info -> View from Here. You can then select wireframe, topo, or image overlay.

I agree, awesome overlays! Even for routes that already have ample beta, you really make things much clearer!

Nice! Yeah we saw a few bolts out left and figured you were working on another route there.